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Bair, Alexia: [inaudible] Bair, Alexia: Okay. Bair, Alexia: This is an interview with Kay Edgington, conducted by Alexia Bair, on October 27th, 2025, at 10 a.m. Bair, Alexia: So, when did you come to Towson, and how long did you stay?

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K Edgington: I came in 1976, which was the year Towson switched from being a college to a university, and I retired in 2012. Bair, Alexia: What made you decide to come to Towson? K Edgington: That was just luck. I was looking for an academic job K Edgington: within the Baltimore, Washington, D.C. area. I was a single parent and had

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K Edgington: a custody agreement I had to, you know, follow, which limited my range. And in 1976, the job market was very, very tight. Not many openings at all. And Towson had an opening K Edgington: in their affirmative action program, which was a retention program. K Edgington: And I happened to have some odd qualifications and experience, so I was one of three people K Edgington: hired for that, and then two years later, that program was transferred to the English department.

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Bair, Alexia: Thanks. Bair, Alexia: So, what is or was your relationship to the women's studies / women's and gender studies program at Towson? K Edgington: Again, I was not a typical faculty member, because I was hired as a writing specialist to teach just writing courses. K Edgington: and when I first was hired, the program I was working on was in student services. So I began

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K Edgington: as a board member of the Women's Center. K Edgington: And that's how I really started meeting people who were working in women's studies. Elaine Hedges, Sarah Coulter, Jan Wilcotz, later Joanne Pilardi. And K Edgington: at the Women's Center, Jo-Ann Pilardi and I started a radio program that was on the Towson radio station. K Edgington: Which brought a lot of outsiders

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K Edgington: into Towson. I don't know that anyone beyond immediate family of the people we interviewed listened in, but K Edgington: it made connections with outside of our university that became beneficial, I think, later on. Eventually, I K Edgington: did a lot more work with the curriculum transformation program. I was the editor for that, and produced the newsletter, and edited some of the first K Edgington: books with Sarah and Elaine that came out. I taught

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K Edgington: women's studies, Women's Words, Women's Lives, and K Edgington: a short-lived graduate writing program. But largely, I worked with developing the programs, K Edgington: writing course proposals, working with the graduate committee. K Edgington: So a lot of… A lot of committee work.

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Bair, Alexia: That's nice. I took Women's Words and Women's Lives last semester, so… That's cool. Bair, Alexia: How did your educational experiences and life experiences lead to your interest in women's and gender studies? K Edgington: [inaudible] K Edgington: Let me turn this up a bit.

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K Edgington: Well, where to start? Certainly my graduate experiences. I was in an interdisciplinary program at American University. K Edgington: And I started in '73. K Edgington: There were a number of… I was one of the youngest people in the program. There were a number of older women in the program. K Edgington: There were not as many men. Several of them were veterans from Vietnam.

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K Edgington: And my... It shaped my thinking in terms of an interdisciplinary perspective, and realizing, K Edgington: questioning what we called the canon in literature, that we could see… I began to see… I was beginning to realize just how much, K Edgington: for example, the concept of period style in literature and in art history K Edgington: shaped what was considered literature and art history, and excluded women, women writers, women painters.

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K Edgington: And looking beyond in psychology, for example, child psychology was focused so intently on the influence of the mother rather than the family. K Edgington: And history, you know, was about war. K Edgington: Not about what happened to the people who were, K Edgington: you know, whose lives were impacted by war, which was the majority of populations, often. So, yes, that had a lot of influence on my thinking.

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Bair, Alexia: Who offered you support for your involvement in women's and gender studies? K Edgington: Well, the Women's Studies program started in the English department with Elaine Hedges and Sarah Coulter, and there was a great deal of support from the English department. Some people joked that the K Edgington: department chair and some of the senior faculty were happy to get two very strong-willed, assertive women K Edgington: more interested in women's studies than in the English department management.

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K Edgington: But everyone laughed at that joke, so… Bair, Alexia: Yeah. K Edgington: They were very helpful. I found the administration supportive K Edgington: most of the time. I think,

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K Edgington: at the level I was dealing with the administration, K Edgington: I can say that. Other people will disagree, but I was not part of later negotiations at a higher level. Bair, Alexia: That's nice. K Edgington: Did anyone oppose your decision to go into the field or discriminate against you for that choice?

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K Edgington: My family was not particularly happy. K Edgington: They K Edgington: thought if I wasn't going to make a lot of money, then I should just take over the family business. But K Edgington: no, no, no one

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K Edgington: personally discouraged me from what I was doing, or if they were discouraging me, I simply was ignoring it. K Edgington: Wasn't registering. Bair, Alexia: Do you identify as a feminist, and, if so, describe your path to claiming that identity. K Edgington: I find the term, and any term that attempts to identify an umbrella term to

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K Edgington: be very controversial. K Edgington: And, again, back in the early '70s, K Edgington: There was a lot of infighting. K Edgington: They're what we considered old-school feminists and subdivisions.

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K Edgington: And of course, the fact that K Edgington: so many of the loudest voices in the feminist movement were white. K Edgington: And, for Black women, as I think… K Edgington: Can't remember who said it, might have been Angela Davis. White women wanted to get into the job markets and out of their homes, and Black women wanted to get out of white women's kitchens and into their own.

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Bair, Alexia: Yeah. K Edgington: So, I just, you know, if someone K Edgington: would call me a feminist, that was fine. But I'm… Yeah. K Edgington: Certainly, you know,

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K Edgington: use that. I just question that the term is useful, and now it's certainly been weaponized, so it's, you know, so I'm fine now. K Edgington: Yes, call me a feminist. That's the side I will take. K Edgington: Always. Bair, Alexia: Okay.

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Bair, Alexia: How did your association with the women's / women's and gender studies program at Towson shape your feminist consciousness? K Edgington: Well, because I'm so interdisciplinary in my thinking, it was just wonderful for me to be able to meet so many K Edgington: faculty members from different departments, and I think the curriculum transformation project was very, very important, where we were involving faculty from outside of K Edgington: women's studies. And there are a good number of men involved.

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K Edgington: And… I don't know how K Edgington: much permanence, in terms of the general overall curriculum that project... K Edgington: You know, I don't know about the long-term success, but I think it helped. K Edgington: It helped with the way

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K Edgington: outsiders from women's studies looked at women students. Bair, Alexia: Okay. K Edgington: And I think that made women in business, women going into the sciences or math, maybe it lubricated that path a little bit. K Edgington: Rather than, you know, mathematics are pretty asexual.

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Bair, Alexia: Yeah. Bair, Alexia: What feminist thinkers, writers, or activists have been most influential in shaping your thinking about feminism at different points in your life? K Edgington: Starting way back I was drawn to the women who were, K Edgington: I think, focused on not just sexual stereotypes but on the discrimination.

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K Edgington: You know, first you say women are, you know, not assertive, and then you make assertiveness a positive characteristic, and passivity, if you will, K Edgington: a negative one. I think Jane Baker Miller, psychologist K Edgington: writing in the early '70 about women and power and K Edgington: the strengths of women and female, supposedly female characteristics. I think she was an important writer, and I think she's...

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K Edgington: That these early people are K Edgington: very significant now as the K Edgington: right wing, and particularly the fundamentalist Christian right wing, in the United States, are returning to K Edgington: Puritanism, or would like to.

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K Edgington: Similarly, K Edgington: I think Audre Lorde was doing that in her writing, and Adrienne Rich, who was, K Edgington: I think, very significant in terms of K Edgington: the lesbian, gay rights, LBGQ alphabet, because she foresaw a spectrum

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K Edgington: of sexuality K Edgington: in which people could actually move, K Edgington: and put everyone on it. And, K Edgington: oh, see, she was right all along, of course.

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K Edgington: In linguistics, there is a British writer, Deborah Cameron, not to be confused with the American Deborah Tannen, who wrote Women Are From Mars and Men Are From Venus. Cameron has, in fact, taken Deborah Tannen on on that argument. K Edgington: And Cameron's K Edgington: work is because... She goes into history of language, and has examined how terms that refer to women K Edgington: become less respectful, mistress

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K Edgington: versus master, and so forth and so on. Even profanity, bitch, K Edgington: which refers to the, you know, the female dog, and stud, which refers to the male. K Edgington: And many, many of English obscenities refer to women. Bair, Alexia: Yeah.

00:16:21.010 - 00:16:55.370

K Edgington: So, those are K Edgington: several. I would mention some of the eco-feminists, Annette Kolodny is one, who wrote quite a bit about feminism and place. K Edgington: The filmmaker Agnes Varda. K Edgington: Very interesting. She made films until her 90th birthday, roughly...

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Bair, Alexia: That's nice. K Edgington: ...and was K Edgington: quite radical in her thinking, and became more of K Edgington: an outspoken feminist as she grew older.

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K Edgington: Who else? There are just so many. Bair, Alexia: Too many to choose from. K Edgington: Margaret Atwood, of course, K Edgington: you know, who intended The Handmaid's Tale as a cautionary tale, rather than as a handbook for the future.

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K Edgington: So, anyway, I think some of these grandmothers in the writing are very important today. K Edgington: The postmodernist feminism is intellectually significant, but it's not going to reach the average person. K Edgington: Yeah. Bair, Alexia: So, what schools of feminist thought, like liberal, radical, socialist, transnational, womanist, intersectional, etc., have you found most useful in navigating various aspects of your life? For example, work, personal relationships, or activism?

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K Edgington: Okay, I really had to think about this one, so it's good you sent those questions out. Bair, Alexia: Yeah. K Edgington: But I think I'm a radical thinker. K Edgington: But… In the university

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K Edgington: in general, and then interactions in the classroom, K Edgington: I tried to keep an even keel, which would be middle-of-the-road liberalism. K Edgington: And in, let's see, what were the other... My K Edgington: writing, when I'm writing, again, I try to use humor, write in language that reaches a broader audience, and only when I'm doing purely academic,

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K Edgington: narrow audience work, do I K Edgington: get into your postmodernist vocabulary and K Edgington: so forth and so on. Personally, at heart, I think I'm a socialist. K Edgington: I just... I'm not interested in

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K Edgington: acquiring a whole lot of wealth. K Edgington: I once bought a lotto ticket, back when the big jackpot was $11 million, and I spent up until the drawing really, really troubled over K Edgington: How to manage $11 million and do the most good. K Edgington: And I haven't bought a lotto ticket since. Never dawned on me that I would not win.

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K Edgington: But I've... I think my... Just growing up, although I grew up not far from J.D. Vance's home in K Edgington: Middletown in Ohio. I grew up in about 15 miles to the north, and, of course, a couple generations removed, but it was just another planet from his upbringing. It was K Edgington: a fairly affluent town, and it was K Edgington: also a town that had sunset laws, if you know what those are. Nobody was allowed in town who wasn't white between sundown and sunrise, so…

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Bair, Alexia: Oh. K Edgington: Discrimination against, largely blacks and Jews, K Edgington: we didn't even think in terms of Hispanic people or Asian people. But there was also a K Edgington: nuclear research

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K Edgington: lab that was part of the Manhattan Project, so a number of the scientists there were Jewish. K Edgington: And so, and of course, I was one of the first baby boomers, this was post-World War II, and people were a lot kinder K Edgington: in terms of discrimination against Jews. K Edgington: But many of these scientists were married to women who had graduate degrees.

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K Edgington: So K Edgington: there was not much to do in this small town, and they all taught school. So those of us who went to the public school had marvelous, marvelous teachers, and were exposed to thoughts way, way beyond our little town in Ohio. K Edgington: But for some reason, my mother had some Black friends, and I learned very quickly... One of them had given me a little Black baby doll K Edgington: which I really liked. It didn't show dirt, for one thing. I also had a little white one, but I preferred the black one. But there were actually children I wasn't allowed to play with

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K Edgington: because I had a black toy. My father had, K Edgington: as a young man, had lived with a Jewish family K Edgington: for maybe 6 or 7 years, from the time he was 18 until he was K Edgington: In World War II. They were my godparents. My father's family was really very poor, rural. My mother's family was well off, so I was just exposed to different classes.

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K Edgington: Even different races in a very racist town. And that really, really shaped my thinking in terms of all sorts of discrimination, and in terms of money. Bair, Alexia: Yeah. K Edgington: So, that's how I ended up. Bair, Alexia: [inaudible]

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Bair, Alexia: How have changes in the discipline of women's and gender studies affected the way that you teach and what you teach? K Edgington: Well, this, of course, is the past tense, K Edgington: but I think the inclusion, the multicultural approach, that curriculum transformation project, gave... K Edgington: Well, it just legitimized my approach to education. So

00:24:29.450 - 00:25:19.360

K Edgington: that was probably the largest thing in terms of support. K Edgington: I think, although, you know, it was a wonderful experience, I will say, as K Edgington: feminism was evolving, one of the things I found very challenging, and became increasingly so, was that K Edgington: many students would, early on particularly, enroll in women's studies because

00:25:19.640 - 00:25:48.440

K Edgington: they had been hurt, K Edgington: abused, you know, psychological abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse. K Edgington: Or they had, K Edgington: they just had had, I don't know, bad, bad relationships, divorces, poverty and discrimination.

00:25:48.840 - 00:26:22.910

K Edgington: And getting them beyond seeing themselves purely as victims, K Edgington: and getting them K Edgington: to appreciate their strength, that was K Edgington: always a challenge, and it just became increasingly difficult as trigger warnings and

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K Edgington: the, I don't know, K Edgington: hypersensitivity to language, microaggressions, that was just… I was just starting to see that with students K Edgington: when I retired. And K Edgington: I just found that very, very, very troubling, that suddenly so many people were so sensitive, and you know, it was narrowing

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K Edgington: what one could say. On the other hand, K Edgington: I had good experiences with individuals who… Students who knew how to approach that. A Black student who would say, please don't… Could you say enslaved people instead of slaves? K Edgington: And then, you know, that could be turned into a classroom lesson, talking about people with a disability, rather than the K Edgington: disabled, etc, etc, you know, how those things go.

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Bair, Alexia: Yeah. K Edgington: Let's see, but yes, K Edgington: the women's studies, I guess just having it there and having the support made it easier, in all of my classes K Edgington: to introduce more work by women, and finding ways to just integrate

00:28:10.570 - 00:28:46.350

K Edgington: feminist stuff into the larger picture, no matter what course I was teaching. Bair, Alexia: What do you think are the most important contributions that you have made to the advancement of the women's and gender studies program at Towson? K Edgington: I think probably in my writing and K Edgington: editing of newsletters. After the transformation program I was asked to edit

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K Edgington: a newsletter, it's called Faculty Forum, that was published by the administration, and it was the sort of thing the administration liked to take K Edgington: large copies left to conferences... Bair, Alexia: uh huh. K Edgington: so you can see what all we're doing. And

00:29:07.600 - 00:29:36.610

K Edgington: that gave me a forum to bring up K Edgington: different issues and K Edgington: to focus on, you know, as many women faculty members as male faculty members, to get information about the Women's Studies program. K Edgington: And

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K Edgington: I think my writing style, because it's accessible, and I use a lot of humor, sometimes set myself up as the village idiot, making the mistakes, K Edgington: and those articles would actually get circulated. K Edgington: When my daughter was in college, in Portland, Oregon, one of her teachers K Edgington: started reading part of an article in class, and my daughter, of course, was astounded because she had no idea anyone had heard of me outside of Baltimore.

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Bair, Alexia: Oh, that's nice, though. K Edgington: So, that was good. But I think that was probably K Edgington: my largest contribution and scholarship, getting stuff out there, I found, there's ways to do it. Or once I wrote an article on K Edgington: Thelma and Louise, the film Thelma and Louise, that…

00:30:57.120 - 00:31:21.360

K Edgington: It was so controversial when it came out that Time Magazine put them on the cover. K Edgington: And sort of, you know, what's all the fuss about? And I addressed that K Edgington: in an article, presented at a conference, and then it just, you know, spread. So I've had things like that happen... Bair, Alexia: Cool.

00:31:21.560 - 00:32:01.560

K Edgington: ...that are good. I know I've K Edgington: influenced some students individually. I don't know, K Edgington: I think one of my most… Two of my really successful classes, K Edgington: one was just a non-fiction writing class, which happened to have a lot of English majors and several students who were also in the Women's Studies program. It was probably in maybe the late '80s. And that was just a wonderful group,

00:32:01.720 - 00:32:38.000

K Edgington: wonderful class to begin with, and I think maybe one of the... K Edgington: I guess the only time I taught the American Lit Survey K Edgington: was during the summer, and that was at the beginning of the transformation project, and I had no idea how to approach it, so I went into class, and I said, well, K Edgington: this is going to be an experiment. And I discovered that most of the students, a good number of them, were students who had failed

00:32:38.720 - 00:33:13.900

K Edgington: in the spring, and we were repeating the course in the summer, because they thought it would be easier, and I had K Edgington: a number of students from Johns Hopkins' lacrosse team, K Edgington: and a bunch of sorority girls who had found out the Hopkins to lacrosse team was... So... K Edgington: And I think I had one English major, maybe. And I just

00:33:14.340 - 00:33:50.450

K Edgington: sort of explained what we were trying to do, and I had organized the course according to theme, rather than chronologically. And, right away, one of the Black kids said, K Edgington: There's not a unit on Black students. K Edgington: And I said, no, there are no ghettos in this class. K Edgington: And everybody laughed, and I went through and pointed out where the Black writers were throughout. As with the women writers, very often I would pair a woman writer with a male writer.

00:33:52.230 - 00:34:13.980

K Edgington: And it just worked out really well. Bair, Alexia: Okay. Bair, Alexia: What courses have you taught in the Women's and Gender Studies program, and which course was your favorite, and why? K Edgington: Well, as I said, the only

00:34:14.340 - 00:34:43.030

K Edgington: courses were the Women's Words course and the short-lived Graduate course. And I think, K Edgington: of those two, of course, the Women's Words, particularly K Edgington: early on, when there was a mixture of older returning students, women who, K Edgington: because they were old enough,

00:34:43.270 - 00:35:25.850

K Edgington: far enough in school, that they could come back to college. And students who were English majors, students who were K Edgington: interested in women's studies. It was a good group, just almost in terms of what the students could bring and what we could do. K Edgington: Later on, when the course became K Edgington: one that satisfied the second writing requirement, I began to get

00:35:25.920 - 00:36:14.190

K Edgington: more traditionally-aged students, and students who took the course not because they were so interested in feminism, but because it looked like it might be easier than K Edgington: some of the others, you know, they weren't as interested in business writing, or fiction writing, or something. K Edgington: And I taught that course mostly as K Edgington: a non-fiction writing course. I didn't want to get into fiction writing. And I didn't have many English majors or women's studies majors. And one of the reasons was that Jan Wilcotz had started teaching that course.

00:36:14.400 - 00:37:00.490

K Edgington: And Jan also was in the English department, and taught the required and very popular Brit lit survey K Edgington: number two, which was after Milton, and then got into popular writers like Jane Austen K Edgington: and all. So, many of the K Edgington: English majors and women's studies majors, because Jan had been there several years before I was, and had started this thing, they knew her by name, and some of them had had her in class. And so, you know, when you've had a teacher you like

00:37:01.100 - 00:37:18.640

K Edgington: and you can you stick with her, K Edgington: you stick with her. K Edgington: And K Edgington: so I was a little… A little envious at times, but Jan was a good help and good advisor for me to have in shaping the class.

00:37:19.300 - 00:37:49.940

K Edgington: I can tell you, K Edgington: one of my best assignments, or one of the most fun, I think, for the students, was I had them do a, write K Edgington: an essay about a woman their grandmother's age or older K Edgington: and what her life would have been like

00:37:50.540 - 00:38:25.370

K Edgington: at whatever the student's current age was, and I could do this because I had a bunch of, like, 20-year-olds in the class. K Edgington: And they could interview, they could write about, you know, their grandmothers, their actual grandmothers. If they didn't have an older relative, they could K Edgington: figure out K Edgington: where a certain relative would have been living at a certain period of time, and so it was

00:38:25.660 - 00:39:00.270

K Edgington: a research paper. And many of the students K Edgington: were writing, were interviewing, you know, a great-grandmother, a great aunt, and K Edgington: whoever they were writing about was someone who was their age in the 1940s, K Edgington: maybe a little earlier, and student after student would get up and give a little summary, and she would say, I found out that

00:39:00.830 - 00:39:32.680

K Edgington: my Aunt Sally, or my Uncle Herman, wasn't really the child of K Edgington: the relative being written about, but the child was born out of wedlock and was raised by another family member as their own. K Edgington: And, K Edgington: you know, every time someone would say that, the whole class would start to laugh, because it seemed like there was one of those revelations in every family.

00:39:32.960 - 00:39:55.300

K Edgington: So that just turned out to be a very good K Edgington: and interesting assignment, which I… Bair, Alexia: Yes. K Edgington: I wish I had stumbled upon that idea a lot earlier in my career, because it helped the students bond as a group, too, and that's always important.

00:39:57.410 - 00:40:36.470

Bair, Alexia: How did students and faculty colleagues in the Women's and Gender Studies program inspire you? K Edgington: Pretty much on a daily basis. K Edgington: It was, I think, K Edgington: with the faculty, that there were always new ideas. And I think,

00:40:37.560 - 00:41:17.410

K Edgington: particularly, Sarah Coulter was very influential, in that she K Edgington: did not publish much herself at all, but she read extensively, has an incredible memory. She must be close to 90 now. She's living in Colorado, but she's going to K Edgington: move in with the daughter in New Mexico, but she comes back, she has a daughter here, and so I K Edgington: still, you know, see her once every year or two and have lunch and catch up. And she's just

00:41:18.050 - 00:41:55.830

K Edgington: very active, and so she was always on top of things and introducing new ideas. K Edgington: The... K Edgington: A faculty member who left, Judy Barris, who was part-time, was also a wide reader, and when she was with Women's Studies, at the beginning of every semester, she would do a book review of K Edgington: her summer readings. That was very helpful. So those were two particularly helpful individuals on the faculty.

00:41:55.960 - 00:42:30.410

K Edgington: The other thing, the Women's Studies program brought so many speakers, and especially during the transformation project, when we actually had a budget and could get people in K Edgington: from all over the country. K Edgington: And sometimes, you know, we would get someone here for K Edgington: several days, and they could meet with faculty, they could

00:42:30.840 - 00:42:56.580

K Edgington: give presentations in individual classes, sometimes they would do, you know, lectures open to the whole university. They brought in K Edgington: a lot of K Edgington: people I never would have K Edgington: met, you know, and it's very, very different meeting people in person.

00:42:58.050 - 00:43:40.780

K Edgington: I think that women's studies, our projects, K Edgington: were sort of contagious. I did a lot of work with the cultural studies program K Edgington: and with the African American Studies program. My office mate, Lena Ampadu, was, was involved with that, and of course Cindy Gissendanner. So there was a lot of K Edgington: Similar stuff going on throughout most of my career. And there were...

00:43:41.640 - 00:44:06.860

K Edgington: It was a good bit of student participation in these things too. K Edgington: Uh... K Edgington: There were always students who K Edgington: were inspiring, one way or another. Some of them simply by turning something around.

00:44:07.070 - 00:44:39.590

K Edgington: You know, find a student who is struggling, and find ways to give them a second chance. K Edgington: So I used to do things with the curriculum, like, if K Edgington: the first writing assignment K Edgington: often disappointed people, and I was basically a writing

00:44:39.710 - 00:45:11.410

K Edgington: instructor, and I was going to be stricter about certain types of, Bair, Alexia: Yeah. K Edgington: you know, stylistic transitions, K Edgington: a paper overly cluttered with grammar was, you know, I was not going to let that pass with grammar errors and so forth. But I would tell them after the first or second

00:45:11.620 - 00:45:26.380

K Edgington: paper came back that, yes, I threw out the lowest grade. K Edgington: And... K Edgington: And that I would factor in improvement. Bair, Alexia: That's nice, yeah.

00:45:26.380 - 00:45:54.410

K Edgington: And stuff like that. K Edgington: So that didn't reach everybody, but I think that gave a lot of students more confidence in K Edgington: their ability, and reduced some of that hostility K Edgington: that can occur when you've got an instructor who's,

00:45:56.440 - 00:46:10.460

K Edgington: you know, I was a hard grader, but… Bair, Alexia: Yeah. K Edgington: I felt I needed to be. K Edgington: That's, you know, if you're preparing students for the real world, you have to be able to challenge them.

00:46:10.960 - 00:46:28.770

Bair, Alexia: Yeah, definitely. K Edgington: Some students are intimidated by that, and so I try to find the ones K Edgington: who I could reach, and I… K Edgington: There are always some that fall through the cracks.

00:46:30.730 - 00:46:46.240

K Edgington: That's bad, but… Bair, Alexia: But it does happen, yeah. K Edgington: Yeah. Bair, Alexia: Did you have trouble finding a job after graduation? And what obstacles did you face, if any?

00:46:47.600 - 00:47:20.560

K Edgington: Well, there weren't jobs. K Edgington: There literally were not jobs in academics. I would have had no trouble in 1976 in Washington, D.C. Anyone with a PhD could get a job on K Street K Edgington: with the World Bank, or in governments, I was offered two jobs I didn't apply for, one by a former employer, and another by… K Edgington: Uh...

00:47:21.090 - 00:47:44.430

K Edgington: Someone who had graduated from my program K Edgington: worked for an organization that had an opening. K Edgington: But I didn't want to be a single parent with a job that would be, you know, K Edgington: not necessarily 9 to 5, sometimes 9 to 7, or 9 to 8, and there just

00:47:45.400 - 00:48:14.630

K Edgington: were not many jobs. K Edgington: I think what happened… I was lucky to find the one at Towson, which was full-time. K Edgington: Some of my colleagues, were older women who already were in academics. One, Catherine Gira, K Edgington: was, you know, the

00:48:15.490 - 00:48:50.230

K Edgington: chair of the English department at the University of Baltimore. She had started with a master's degree, didn't finish her doctorate, because her children and her husband was ill. After her husband died and the children were old enough, K Edgington: She came back to school, got her doctorate, and, well, she ended up the president of Frostburg. Bair, Alexia: Oh, nice, yeah. K Edgington: Yeah, so, Faith Gablenick

00:48:51.340 - 00:49:27.330

K Edgington: was another classmate who became director of the Honors Program at the University of Maryland, and then went on to become president of K Edgington: University of Puget Sound. K Edgington: Anyway, so, there were K Edgington: people who already had established careers and went further. The younger people, the women

00:49:28.260 - 00:49:48.260

K Edgington: would teach K Edgington: freshman comp, or the ones who could just take part-time K Edgington: work did. The men in the program largely did not want to teach composition, K Edgington: and just wouldn't apply for those jobs.

00:49:49.190 - 00:50:11.490

K Edgington: So, I think, interestingly, it was the women who got the jobs, K Edgington: because they were willing to do sort of K Edgington: more labor-intensive writing courses as things opened up. K Edgington: In what places.

00:50:11.490 - 00:50:46.260

K Edgington: The men were able to go into other fields, like technical writing. That was a big one. K Edgington: And so forth and so on. The program I was in was… It was small. K Edgington: They accepted no more than ten K Edgington: candidates a year, and very often several would drop out in the course of the program. But it was discontinued after

00:50:46.480 - 00:51:04.510

K Edgington: maybe ten years K Edgington: because they claimed that K Edgington: the graduates were not getting academic jobs. K Edgington: And what it was

00:51:05.030 - 00:51:45.980

K Edgington: was very, very few of the men who graduated from the program went into academics. There were a couple who already had jobs and had picked up a doctorate. K Edgington: And I honestly know only two people, K Edgington: when I was there, two guys, who went into academics. One went to Kent State and K Edgington: died young. Just had one of those widowmaker heart attacks when he was

00:51:46.650 - 00:52:06.750

K Edgington: maybe 40, late 30s. And the other one left academics for something that paid more. K Edgington: There you go. Bair, Alexia: That's usually how it goes, isn't it? K Edgington: You know.

00:52:08.630 - 00:52:25.790

K Edgington: So, are you going to ask me, would I advise students to major in women's studies? Bair, Alexia: Yeah. Bair, Alexia: Like, how can they build a career with the women's and gender studies as a major or focus of study? K Edgington: I would make it a focus of studies, or a dual major.

00:52:26.650 - 00:52:55.240

K Edgington: In this day and age, I don't know what you're doing. K Edgington: And it sort of depends upon your side interests, and K Edgington: where you would be going into, K Edgington: and to work, I mean, if you want to go into non-profit

00:52:56.100 - 00:53:20.150

K Edgington: sort of organizations, that's fine, but I think there's such a stigma right now. K Edgington: And not knowing how things are going to work out, and the whole anti-DEI K Edgington: nonsense K Edgington: that I would say do a double major, or just, you know, major in

00:53:21.280 - 00:53:48.240

K Edgington: something where you have a better chance of K Edgington: getting a job and use your focus in women's studies. Bair, Alexia: I'm an economics major, and I'm doing women's and gender studies as, like, a minor. K Edgington: Yeah, yeah. In fact, my understanding is when the Women's Studies program first started, it was

00:53:48.780 - 00:54:00.690

K Edgington: never intended to be a major, K Edgington: but to be a minor. K Edgington: And that's part of the problem is, you know, it's a small department. Bair, Alexia: Yeah.

00:54:02.230 - 00:54:15.470

K Edgington: And K Edgington: I think Towson has changed K Edgington: for the better. Bair, Alexia: Yeah.

00:54:16.020 - 00:54:34.520

K Edgington: But it became very difficult for a while to hire people, K Edgington: because women's studies, very often they had to be joint appointments. Bair, Alexia: Yeah. K Edgington: And so you'd have to find

00:54:34.960 - 00:55:02.020

K Edgington: someone in another department, or another department that was willing to do a split. K Edgington: And then you would have a faculty member with, you know, one foot in one department and one foot in the other, and having to satisfy the tenure requirements on each side. And that was just very, very difficult... Bair, Alexia: Yeah. K Edgington: ...to find people.

00:55:02.020 - 00:55:16.080

K Edgington: And K Edgington: our salaries, Towson salaries, were low. K Edgington: And K Edgington: graduate students just got wiser

00:55:16.990 - 00:55:42.030

K Edgington: in terms of a K Edgington: less rose-colored-glasses way of looking at academic professions. K Edgington: But many of us didn't… It just didn't dawn on us that your starting salary is… K Edgington: You only get raises when you get promoted.

00:55:42.520 - 00:56:01.480

Bair, Alexia: Yeah. K Edgington: And then you have to get... K Edgington: It used to be, you started, no matter what your degree, as an instructor, and then you could get promoted K Edgington: to assistant. But you'd have to get tenure,

00:56:01.900 - 00:56:33.420

K Edgington: very often, to get that promotion. You couldn't get associate K Edgington: without tenure. And then full, if your department was full of full professors, it got harder and harder. But those were your major K Edgington: salary raises. We didn't get annual raises. K Edgington: Universities don't do that, unless there is a state, you know,

00:56:33.770 - 00:57:01.630

K Edgington: the entire state employees got a certain percentage. So, at Towson, your raises came if there was money K Edgington: for what was called merit. K Edgington: And merit pay, there are always arguments about, among departments, how that merit pay gets divided. K Edgington: Does it get divided by the number of faculty in the department? Does it get divided,

00:57:02.250 - 00:57:36.940

K Edgington: you know, across colleges? And in liberal arts you don't have that many K Edgington: departments that get grants bringing money in in sufficient ways. You know, thank goodness for geography that's in liberal arts, they get big grants. Economics will get big grants, but our research doesn't get K Edgington: funded K Edgington: very often, in terms of a whole department. So

00:57:37.110 - 00:57:57.420

K Edgington: as people got wiser about the problems with salary, K Edgington: they would look at K Edgington: other universities that had higher starting salaries. Bair, Alexia: Yeah.

00:57:57.540 - 00:58:23.680

K Edgington: So we lost a lot of people there. K Edgington: Which is too bad, but I think they've K Edgington: been able to do some compensation. Unfortunately, now they're getting a lot of 5-year contracts, and… Bair, Alexia: What do you think could be done to attract more students to the Women's and Gender Studies program?

00:58:32.080 - 00:59:12.650

K Edgington: I think maybe one of the best ways is K Edgington: through having speakers or programs that would draw K Edgington: student participation, student interest. K Edgington: I know at times, and, you know, you can work with other departments on this, too, but I know Angela Davis has appeared at our conference. Maya Angelou has appeared on our campus.

00:59:12.810 - 00:59:41.730

K Edgington: Adrienne Rich, decades ago. K Edgington: But, you know, if you can get women K Edgington: speakers who are well-known in the community, K Edgington: and sometimes writers, you know, the English department could get Laura Lippman, for example.

00:59:41.730 - 01:00:07.400

Bair, Alexia: Yeah. K Edgington: That would bring a lot of people in and K Edgington: it's also a way to K Edgington: interest people in women's studies. I think if women's studies can co-sponsor things... Once we did a co-sponsor with the art department and Joyce Scott

01:00:08.660 - 01:00:38.570

K Edgington: came to campus and did a presentation, which, you know, it's well attended. K Edgington: So that's a way to get people in. Bair, Alexia: Definitely. K Edgington: And I think drawing on faculty who teach in other departments

01:00:39.430 - 01:01:12.950

K Edgington: is one way of, you know, anyone who takes a class from Cindy K Edgington: is gonna hear about women's studies. K Edgington: So those are ways. But this is just a very difficult, difficult time, and K Edgington: so far, it looks like the university is standing up, and I've met the provost.

01:01:13.270 - 01:01:35.710

K Edgington: And I've met the new dean, K Edgington: just to talk with briefly, very briefly, at a couple of events, and they seemed K Edgington: very determined to continue in the direction that the university has gone. Bair, Alexia: Yeah.

01:01:37.280 - 01:01:52.450

K Edgington: So hopefully… Bair, Alexia: Fingers crossed. Bair, Alexia: What do you see as the relevance of women's and gender studies in today's world? K Edgington: Oh, absolutely essential.

01:01:52.650 - 01:02:13.170

K Edgington: Absolutely essential in all disciplines. K Edgington: And, you know, I think we're not talking just about the survival of the discipline, I think we're actually talking about the survival of democracy as we know it. Bair, Alexia: Yeah. K Edgington: Because

01:02:16.350 - 01:02:33.990

K Edgington: there are just people in power who K Edgington: want to take women back a century. K Edgington: And there's... It's a challenge. They've got a challenge. Bair, Alexia: [inaudble]

01:02:34.440 - 01:02:55.050

K Edgington: So what kind of economics are you gonna do? Bair, Alexia: I'm doing… Like, my major's just regular economics right now, and Bair, Alexia: I want to… With that major, I want to go into wealth management. Bair, Alexia: You know, helping people protect and grow their wealth and all that kind of stuff, so…

01:02:57.080 - 01:03:13.550

K Edgington: Yeah. K Edgington: That's a field that can change. Bair, Alexia: It is, yeah. And while it's very interesting, because, like you said, it's... Bair, Alexia: Women's and gender studies can pop up, you know, in all sorts of discipline, and I didn't think that…

01:03:15.580 - 01:03:42.080

Bair, Alexia: I didn't think that it was something that would have been talked about in, like, my economics courses, but it has, and so I found that very interesting. K Edgington: Yeah, I have an account with a bank within walking distance, which is Chase Bank, and the people in the offices are all male. K Edgington: Yeah, the sort of receptionist teller is a woman. Bair, Alexia: Yeah.

01:03:42.140 - 01:03:53.350

Bair, Alexia: That's kind of… Bair, Alexia: I've noticed that's kind of how it is with Bair, Alexia: most firms. And I worked with a financial planning firm over the summer Bair, Alexia: and

01:03:53.850 - 01:04:18.170

Bair, Alexia: the team I worked with was two guys, but a part of their team were also two other women, but they didn't… Bair, Alexia: They weren't… They definitely helped, but they just weren't as involved as the guys were. Bair, Alexia: And so, I've noticed that, too, even where I've worked and all that, and Bair, Alexia: I'm hoping that I'm gonna work with them after I graduate.

01:04:18.280 - 01:04:39.930

Bair, Alexia: And so, adding another woman to the team would be great. K Edgington: Yeah, yeah. K Edgington: Yeah, I think when I got out of graduate school, K Edgington: and my whole experience being divorced in the early 70s, financially,

01:04:40.190 - 01:04:57.580

K Edgington: I think my house was on… My name was on the mortgage for the house, but I was selling my share back. K Edgington: So, anyway, I could not claim K Edgington: the house as an asset, but I was responsible, should… Bair, Alexia: Right.

01:04:57.580 - 01:05:14.660

K Edgington: ...my ex not make the payments. K Edgington: I was… Same way with credit cards. K Edgington: Back then, you know, a family had one credit card. K Edgington: So I did not have credit in my own name,

01:05:14.770 - 01:05:49.410

K Edgington: although my name was on the credit card, and I was responsible for any unpaid bills, and it was just... K Edgington: And I had some money of my own, but K Edgington: I had trouble renting an apartment. I had to lie. And I had a family member who owned K Edgington: a marina in Florida, and so I called, and I said,

01:05:49.580 - 01:06:11.540

K Edgington: here's what we're gonna do. You're gonna get a phone call, and you're going to say that I own this property, I inherited it, and you're my manager, okay? K Edgington: She said, fine. And that's what happened. Bair, Alexia: Nice. K Edgington: I know I don't have the work history, but I, you know, I have an income from this investment.

01:06:11.740 - 01:06:51.090

K Edgington: You know, it was before computers, no one could Google. K Edgington: And then after I graduated and got the job, one of the things none of us realized was it took so long for the state to K Edgington: process paperwork, that we probably wouldn't get our first paychecks before Thanksgiving. K Edgington: And finally, we found a way that we could get advances.

01:06:51.240 - 01:07:22.900

K Edgington: Yeah. Sort of to keep us going. But when I opened a bank account, the manager was a woman, and she said, oh, you know, you've got a PhD, first of all, we're going to put doctor on your check. K Edgington: And she said, do you have a credit card? And I said, no. And she says, well, K Edgington: you've got a job at Towson, we're gonna give you a credit card. K Edgington: And, you know, that was…

01:07:23.450 - 01:07:44.430

K Edgington: So having a feminist in the bank… made my life so much easier. K Edgington: And, so anyway, I wish you luck, and... Bair, Alexia: Thank you. K Edgington: Personal finance, that's gonna be a challenge, and it's gonna change, and…

01:07:45.270 - 01:07:56.450

Bair, Alexia: Yeah. K Edgington: Cyber coins, and all kinds of scary things. Bair, Alexia: Yeah, but hopefully I… Hopefully I'll still have a job. Bair, Alexia: After all the changes.

01:07:56.450 - 01:08:16.960

K Edgington: Hmm. Bair, Alexia: Just one more question, if you could do it all again, would you? K Edgington: I can't answer that. K Edgington: If I could go back and, you know, how far back do I go

01:08:17.250 - 01:08:40.370

K Edgington: is my question. You know, I K Edgington: might have decided to go to a different university K Edgington: and end up in film K Edgington: as a, you know, I have this whole creative side that

01:08:41.400 - 01:09:04.430

K Edgington: I'm able to nurture more now. K Edgington: Since I've retired, I've published a novel, and K Edgington: painting again. I'm doing a lot more work with film and some writing about film. K Edgington: So I, you know, I don't know.

01:09:04.430 - 01:09:30.850

Bair, Alexia: Yeah. K Edgington: if I were going to be in academics, I'm a strong believer in public education, and we can complain about the state salaries and the state conditions and faculty getting furloughed. I don't know if that's happened this year yet. Bair, Alexia: I don't know. K Edgington: That happened to me many, many, many times, and

01:09:31.110 - 01:10:02.500

K Edgington: that was the first thing the state would do. You didn't need to shut down the government for the state budget crisis. They would cut the K Edgington: academic budgets and then they would furlough faculty, and for a while it was, K Edgington: you know, they would just take one of your paychecks. K Edgington: Because we couldn't quit teaching.

01:10:02.800 - 01:10:39.380

K Edgington: So we still had to work. Now, when they furlough, the furloughs occur during spring break, the week of spring break, and a week during January. So they still cut their salaries, but it's a time, at least, when you're K Edgington: not teaching. K Edgington: So I don't know. I don't know. If I could K Edgington: be more effective in a different area.

01:10:40.600 - 01:11:00.750

K Edgington: I would go into a different area, but K Edgington: I don't know, it's a hard question. Bair, Alexia: Yeah. K Edgington: You know, someone, you know, I don't know how other faculty members answer it, but you have to realize we spent our entire lives in school

01:11:00.880 - 01:11:22.280

K Edgington: and on campuses. My entire adult life, I've been on a college campus. And now I live really close to Johns Hopkins. Bair, Alexia: Oh, yeah. K Edgington: And a lot of times, I just go over there and walk. K Edgington: You know, I would go over to Towson and walk, but parking is…

01:11:22.280 - 01:11:32.340

Bair, Alexia: Parking's bad. K Edgington: I should just walk the five miles. K Edgington: Yeah. K Edgington: Yeah.

01:11:32.840 - 01:11:48.130

K Edgington: So I don't know, but I certainly have no regrets. K Edgington: Oh, I have regrets that I could have done better, and so forth, but in terms of... No. K Edgington: No. K Edgington: Quite happy.

01:11:48.490 - 01:12:06.610

Bair, Alexia: That's good, yeah. K Edgington: So… Okay, well, it was good meeting with you, and… Bair, Alexia: Yes, thank you for taking the time to do this. K Edgington: Well, I hope it's beneficial to someone.

01:12:06.800 - 01:12:16.520

Bair, Alexia: Me too. K Edgington: In some way. K Edgington: But, hard to say no to Cindy. Bair, Alexia: Yeah, it is.

01:12:16.520 - 01:12:36.600

K Edgington: Yep. She's just so nice. Bair, Alexia: She is. K Edgington: Her way of doing things was... It was pretty hard to say no to anyone in women's studies. K Edgington: You had, you know, people who were so nice you couldn't say no, and you had people who were just

01:12:37.560 - 01:12:51.870

K Edgington: not going to leave you alone Bair, Alexia: Until you agree, yeah. K Edgington: Alright, so, well, enjoy the rest of your day. Bair, Alexia: Thank you, you too.

01:12:51.870 - 01:13:04.710

K Edgington: It's gonna be maybe the last decent day. K Edgington: Warming up. Okay. Bair, Alexia: Thank you so much again. K Edgington: Sure.

01:13:05.260 - 01:13:07.410

K Edgington: Right, off we go.